looking for suggestion: Managing Browser Config with Stow and Git in Dotfiles

[HiIamChaitanya]

Discussion: Managing Browser Config with Stow and Git in Dotfiles

Seeking suggestions on how to effectively manage browser configuration files within my dotfiles repository using stow and git.

I'm currently using `stow` to manage my dotfiles, which works well for most configurations. However, I'm encountering challenges specifically with browser configuration files.

My Goal:

• To use `stow` for symbolic linking these configurations to their appropriate locations.

• To maintain version control of these configurations using `git`.

Current Challenges:

• I don’t really have a proper method to implement dotfiles config for the browser config.

• Directly stowing these configurations might lead to clutter or potential conflicts with other dotfiles due to multiple profile options in Zen browser.

• I'm looking for a clean and organized approach to manage these configurations, and only want a single profile that can be managed by dotfiles.

Specific Questions:

• Are there recommended methods for managing browser configurations within a dotfiles repository?

• How can I effectively use `stow` to manage symbolic links for browser profiles while maintaining separation?

• Are there best practices for handling potentially sensitive data within browser configurations (e.g., excluding certain files from version control)?

• Are there any alternative approaches that might be better suited for this task?

Looking forward to your insights and suggestions!

[jannis-baum]

You can use a user.js file in your profile directory to set most preferences, same as for Firefox. For browser and website styling, you can use userChrome.css and userContent.css respectively, which are placed in the chrome/ directory of your profile. While definitely not an optimal solution, keeping these (up to) 3 files in your dotfiles should allow you to take care of most things.

[vraravam]

imo, its better to do that via the UI about:config. I have noticed that some of the preferences go into user.js, while others go into prefs.js (I haven't spent time to determine any pattern as to what goes into which file).

[jannis-baum]

prefs.js shouldn't be edited manually, it's used by the browser to keep preferences and also runtime settings. Anything you set should go into user.js, meaning prefs.js shouldn't even be part of your dotfiles. The user.js is "sourced" (though not really) at startup

[vraravam]

agreed - that's why i prefer to suggest to edit via the UI.

[vraravam]

@HiIamChaitanya - I have effectively done what you are looking for. My dotfiles repo is here - but, most of my browser profiles are stored elsewhere in a private and encrypted repo.

The reason for showing you the dotfiles repo is that that's where I have the .gitignore for the profiles repo, AND the .envrc (direnv-bsaed auto-config) that gets setup when setting things up for the first time in a new mac machine. (This also works idempotently so that even if I traverse to that folder in the terminal, then direnv kicks in and sets up the symbolic links, the git repo, etc. These 2 files should actually be more than enough to help setup your machine (assuming its a mac, but, even if not, then the commands should work mostly the same for linux with some slight tweaks).

If you still need some help, please do reach out, and I can try to help over a zoom call.